In 1969 I began in ham radio as a short wave listener with identification NL516. It was fun as a SWL to receive QSL cards from all over the world. Some of those cards came from entities which no longer exist today. Since 1974 I am a licensed ham radio operator with call sign PA0FVH. For many years I was active from Delft, where I operated PI4TTC during contests and fielddays. For a period of ten years in the 80s/90s I ran the QSL service for region R09 Delft.

In 1996 I moved to Veenendaal and in 2006, after fifteen years of inactivity I picked up the hobby again and started with a magnetic loop antenna. At that time I was living in an apartment building and my antenna space was limited to my roof deck on the fifth floor. Stealth hamming was the key word. I was using the aluminum fire escape ladder (10m high) as a vertical antenna on the lower bands. Tuning was done with the CG-3000 automatic antenna tuner. If antenna space is limited, you have to be creative.

My current antenna is a 44ft doublet fed by open line and CG-3000 remote ATU on the roof deck of a four-story apartment building.

I will QSL 100% to any direct QSL received, SAE appreciated, no need for IRCs or (green) stamps. All my logs from 1974 onwards are on LoTW. I like chasing DX and operate many RTTY contests.

I enjoy receiving paper QSL cards and I am using a FDC (First-Day-Cover) album to showcase my QSLs. For each DXCC entity, currently 340, I have a place holder in the album. It is my ATNO (all time new one) album.